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Pancakes
1/2 pint of milk 2 ounces of flour 1 teaspoon baking powder Butter Mix the flour and baking powder together, adding the milk slowly. Put the batter aside, for at least two hours, or the pancakes will not be light. Use a six-inch frying-pan and for this size half a teacup of batter will be required and a piece of butter half the size of a walnut. Just let the butter get hot, and thoroughly grease the pan before putting in the batter. Turn with a broad-bladed knife as soon as brown, and brown on the other side. Roll when done, and sift powdered sugar over the pancakes.
A thin, eggless pancake in the English style — closer to a crepe than to a stack of American flapjacks. The batter is very loose, and that is deliberate.
- The measurementsIf the book is British, half a pint is 10 fl oz (about 1 1/4 cups); an American half pint is 8 fl oz. Two ounces of flour is a scant 1/2 cup by weight — weigh it if you can, since scooped flour can run 25 percent heavy and will thicken the batter past the point where it spreads.
- How thin it should beAt this ratio — about 2 ounces of flour to 10 fluid ounces of milk — the batter is very thin, thinner than heavy cream, and should run over the pan in a sheet when swirled.
- The two-hour restResting lets the flour hydrate fully and the gluten relax, which helps make the pancake tender rather than rubbery. A chemical leavener begins acting as soon as it is wet, so a batter left two hours may give less lift than one used at once, though modern double-acting powders also react in the heat of the pan. Cover it, and stir before using.
- No eggsThis is an eggless batter. Expect a more fragile pancake than a standard crepe; it tears more easily and wants a confident, quick turn.
- Pan and fatHalf a teacup of batter is roughly 2 to 3 fluid ounces, or about 4 to 6 tablespoons. Butter half the size of a walnut is roughly a teaspoon or two. Medium heat is right: butter that browns before the batter goes in will taste scorched by the second pancake, so wipe the pan and re-grease between rounds.
- TurningWait until the surface loses its wet sheen and the edges lift from the pan, usually 1 to 2 minutes. The second side needs only 30 to 45 seconds.
- Yield and servingPerhaps five to eight six-inch pancakes, depending on how generously the pan is filled. Rolled with powdered sugar is the finish given here; sugar with a squeeze of lemon is a common English accompaniment and cuts the sweetness.
Thin rolled pancakes dusted with sugar are a standard English form of the dish, eaten above all on Shrove Tuesday, when households used up milk, butter and eggs before the Lenten fast. What is notable here is that the eggs are gone entirely. Meatless cookery books could serve vegetarians on principle as well as ordinary households keeping a meatless day, though nothing in the recipe itself dates the book or explains the omission. Baking powder, commercially available from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, supplies the lift, though it cannot replace the binding and richness eggs would have given. The result is a plainer, thinner pancake, but recognisably the same dish.